Georgia’s geographic location and its history as one of the original 13 colonies make the study of its material culture essential for understanding the American South. Certainly, the state’s decorative arts in particular exist in the context of other colonies and states, and our scholarship resonates with the work in those areas. To mark the first decade of the Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts and its symposia, we have invited representatives from our neighboring states to talk about their own research, collections and decorative-arts history.

The center and symposium are named for Henry Derriel Green (1909–2003). Green’s interest in antiques and the decorative arts began in the 1930s, a hundred years after the end of the period when Georgia’s artisans produced the furniture that became his passion. He helped organize the first exhibition of its kind, Southern Furniture 1640–1820, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1952, at a time when few imagined what the South’s cabinet makers were capable of. Green continued to discover and document examples of Piedmont furniture and disseminated his vast knowledge through exhibitions, forums and publications. His book “Furniture of the Georgia Piedmont Before 1830,” published in 1976 in conjunction with the exhibition at the High Museum of Art, quickly became a standard reference. Green’s example has inspired generations of scholars from diverse disciplines to examine and interpret the decorative arts and material culture of Georgia and the South.